Folks songs

Simon Steen-Andersen deconstructs stylistic elements with a sharp, almost forensic electronic lens trained on the grosso soloists. Diana Soh, meanwhile, revisits the music of her childhood in Singapore, weaving its echoes into her latest creation. Sung by Rinat Shaham, her work resonates with Luciano Berio’s iconic Folk Songs. Rejecting the artificiality of folk melodies accompanied by piano, Berio reimagined them with orchestration and vocal techniques, transforming the oral traditions of Sardinia, Sicily, and Armenia into written form. Was this twentieth-century vision of expressive, universalizing utopia merely an ideal—or does it still resonate in the twenty-first? This question lingers in the grand orchestral finale of ManiFeste-2025, performed by the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Co-produced by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and Radio France. Concert broadcast live on France Musique in the program Le concert du soir presented by Clément Rochefort. Then available for streaming on the France Musique website and Radio France app.